I also have just basic knowledge of how the lightning network works, but I have the impression that the transactions are only recorded on-chain when the channel is closed, and not when it's funded, but I'm not sure.

As for the question "creating large payment channels can support decentralization?" I would say it's the opposite. If a large hub is creating, we would almost have a service that would work as a bank. A person or a company would have an incentive to create a large hub that is well funded and well connected since they would be getting the fees, and users would have an incentive to use that channel because they wouldn't need to keep opening channel and paying for it, since they could to a channel that is well connected.

This would not be good, and is a critic for the LN, but it probably wont happen. You can get an explanation on why it wont happen on this video by Andreas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-nKuInDq6g

Basically he explains that those hubs will be targeted by hacks, so it would not be wise to try to create them. Also, if the network is designed to expand by itself, so after a while there won't probably be any incentive for users to search for these hubs, so they probably wont be created.

  I was still thinking that Lightning Network would be used primarily by exchanges. I have never thought about that as an escrow account.
But it makes sense see that way.
  So it created the possibility of some institutions starts to work for profit providing large hubs. This is interesting.

No, the cost of running a lightning channel is 1x mining fee THE LEAST (for funding the channel). More realistically it's 2x mining fee (opening and closing), or more, depending on the number of funders.

If no profit could be made, then it would fail for sure. Why would you open your channel for routing if you can't make money on it? Nobody would open his channel for routing, so the project would fail from the start. It all DEPENDS on people making money routing other people's payments.

Sorry but I cannot agree and you ran off last time when we had this debate

Each channel costs in miners fees and the ledgers needs the money to operate  and the killer is
it works like snooker balls across the route and not as if liquid is being sent down a pipe

I cannot pass your $500 to Alice because you are in credit with me on one channel unless the channel
opened between Alice and myself contains $500 of my money

Money cannot just be moved from one private ledger to another because it could be counterfeit money 

please see white paper and point out if you think my statement is not correct
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf

We have already seen what an open market has turned into with transaction fees here so
"from a business perspective AND a technical perspective" it makes perfect
sense to charge transaction fees and interest on the money for the service you provide.

Some of these transactions take days to be confirmed which only adds to the trouble because
it's not like a end to end TCP connection and is more like UDP packet are being sent

It's far from being live so you must be talking about on testnet here and Bitcoin itself was on that for years

Bankers are always out to make money or did you forget that for all practical purposes we need banking hubs
and you admit it in your next statement anyway with the word "indefinitely" so unless you have a friend that is always
on-line, has the bandwidth and  BTC to forward on your payments then can we just call them banks please.


Yes they first talked about days, then weeks and now years just like you keep an account open
for years with a regular bank right

Me and you could open a bidirectional channel and play ping-pong all night long and save $10,000 in fees or more
but when we close the channel in the morning we are left with a hang over of $30 in miners fees.

Now I agree $0.01 transactions should move "Off-Block" and to be honest I don't quite know how this
should be done but $10 transaction just like in other system should remain "on-block"

Remember that old "Virtually free transaction fees" from the original white paper because they
are trying to pull that one again with hub/banking fees so why are you protecting them ?

The idea is that you open a channel to use it, not so you don't use it. Then you can make many transactions with other people for tiny fees. And mining fees aren't high if you're willing to wait. You could set up a channel, using a low fee, wait a while till it confirms. Once it does, you have instant transactions (no more confirmation waits) and you'd be very happy with the overall price of transaction fees you could be paying.

This is not for beginners though, I strongly advise against using Lightning for the moment (as do the developers of Lightning clients & protocol)

Legal aspects?  You might get regulated as a payment processor....

Thx to CSW twitter:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1960

18 U.S. Code § 1960 - Prohibition of unlicensed money transmitting businesses

We are being told that wallets can become hubs so if you only open a channel to my wallet/hub and I go off line then as
far as your concerned the network has become centralized and your out of luck even if you can broadcast a message on
the BTC block-chain to get the money back that I owe you.

if big banking hubs cannot charge fees to interconnect the banking hubs then we don't have a network unless
everyone agrees to open three channels each, finance them and keep them open and we can get transactions to
work across routes with 100 nodes or more

The people trying to defend LN won't even accept that it must contain major banking hubs for it to work
so they must be miners hoping to run these banks